1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved conveyor chain to be used, for example, in an industrial-type conveyor.
2. State of the Prior Art
Using a conveyor chain comprising a plurality of modular components hinged together to form the chain is known in the art. These modular components typically present a flat upper conveyance surface suited for supporting the articles to be moved.
The application requirements in the industrial field have for sometime forced attention on the technical problem of having chains capable of following more or less winding paths both in the transport plane of the chain and outside it (think, for example, of the curves outside the horizontal work plane that the chains must be able to accomplish to be sent back to the beginning of the conveyor path).
To get this double degree of freedom in the conveyor chains (i.e., as mentioned, to have chains capable of curving inside and outside the conveyance plane), different technical solutions have been proposed. Some of these, for example, call for empty spaces between the chain conveyance components to allow them mutual rotation in the chain work plane; in fact, with a chain curvature the empty spaces on the inside of the curve are closed and the empty spaces on the outside of the curve are widened. But this solution does not allow realizing a stepless conveyance surface with all the obvious disadvantages deriving therefrom. Other solutions proposed in the prior art imply the use of a relatively high number of different components to realize a single modular unit of the chain. These solutions, while allowing operation of the chain even on very winding paths, imply rather high product complexity and consequently high production costs.
The general purpose of the present invention is to remedy the above-mentioned shortcomings by making available a conveyor chain allowing the realization of an almost stepless conveyor surface without voids while having a simple and economical modular structure.